Trust based energy efficient coverage preserving protocol for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless communication technology and the electronic systems advancements have laid the foundation of the wireless sensor network which achieves the growth of low-cost, low power and multi-functional sensor nodes which can be deployed on a single chip to communicate over a short range. The sensor node consists of sensing elements, actuator and a limited source of energy as battery. The major problem in wireless sensor networks is the efficient energy utilization and to keep the network in a good monitoring quality as long as possible. Coverage is a challenging problem in context of the sensor networks and is considered as a measure of QoS. The coverage problem is basically concerned about how well and how long the sensor nodes monitor the given target region. The most efficient way to ensure coverage, while preserving the energy resources is to schedule the nodes between active and sleep modes. Trust mechanism are incorporated for the uncertainties introduced by the environment in which they are deployed. The proposed protocol is an energy efficient coverage preserving protocol, which determines a set of nodes to keep in active state such that every target region is monitored by at least a sensor node. The confidence level of the node determines the level of data sensing and transmission to the base station.